Manufacture

Marbles are made using many technics. These techniques can be loosely categorised into three areas: hand-made, machine-made, and semi-machine made.

1. Hand Made

This is the original method for making marbles. Stone or ivory marbles are fashioned by grinding, whilst clay, pottery, ceramic, or porcelain marbles are made by rolling the material into a ball, and then letting dry, or firing, and then either leaving them natural, or decorating them with paint or glaze. Glass marbles are fashioned through the production of glass rods which are stacked together to form the desired pattern, and then this rod is cut into marble sized pieces using marble scissors.

2. Machine Made

One machine-made technique (also similar to semi-machine made) is when globules of molten glass are dropped into a groove made by two interlocking parallel screws. As the screws rotate the marble travels along them, gradually being shaped into a sphere as it cools. Colour can be added by dropping dyes onto the still liquid marbles.

3. Semi-machine Made

Semi-machine made is a difficult to classify area, but is used for early manual-assist methods, however, the techniques of the full machine-made mass produced marbles are similar.